DROWNINGS: TRAGIC ACCIDENT OR MURDER?

Kirk Douglas Billie got drunk at the Miccosukee Corn Dance, the pool hall and the bowling alley and was furious at his girlfriend, the mother of his children, because she was enjoying a night out without him.

It was late, after midnight, and Billie is a chauvinist who thinks it's a mother's job to do as she's told and stay home with the kids, said his lawyer and a prosecutor on Tuesday. Angry and violent, Billie vowed to punish Sheila Tiger, the lawyers agreed, so he stole her new Chevrolet Tahoe from a friend and plunged it into the Tamiami Canal, just outside the Miccosukee Reserved Land early on June 27, 1997.

In the back lay two of the couple's young sons, 5-year-old Kurt and 3-year-old Keith, who never made it out as Billie watched the truck sink slowly under the dark water. They died almost instantly, though Billie says he didn't know they were there.

In the ensuing years, Miccosukee tribal elders have forgiven Billie and called it a tragic accident. Prosecutors call it murder. On Tuesday, Billie went on trial, facing a possible death sentence if convicted.

"This is the end result of a perverse and abusive relationship, if you could call it that, with Sheila Tiger," prosecutor Frank Tamen told jurors during opening statements. The drownings "were acts of revenge for her rejecting and defying him. Kirk expected Sheila Tiger to do what he said, and if she didn't, she suffered the consequences."

Billie, dressed in a colorful pullover, sat impassively during the opening statements. Awhile later, his longtime girlfriend, Tiger, was equally unemotional as a reluctant witness who gave conflicting testimony on whether Billie admitted intentionally drowning the boys.

Shortly after the accident, Tiger told police and a grand jury that Billie confessed to her that he knew the boys were in the back of the Chevy. On Tuesday she testified that Billie never admitted to anything, then backtracked when confronted with her earlier statements.

The Miccosukee Indian elders have refused to cooperate with state prosecutors and had an angry showdown with federal marshals who came on their land to subpoena witnesses. The tribe, decrying "white man's justice," said the matter has been handled in traditional Indian ways.

Because the deaths occurred on state property just outside the Miccosukee land, state prosecutors have jurisdiction, though a federal judge ruled the Indians had a right to keep prosecutors off their land. In December, prosecutors arrested Tiger when she left the Reserve and kept her for four days until she gave a videotaped statement.

She voluntarily showed up on Tuesday.

During his opening statement, defense attorney Ed O'Donnell told jurors there is no doubt how Tiger's truck wound up in "the drink." But he said the evidence is overwhelming that Billie was a great father who never knew the kids were in the truck. He only intended to destroy Tiger's brand new Chevy Tahoe and force her to stay home more with the children, O'Donnell said.

"You will never hear another shred of evidence that this man was ever violent to those little boys. Ever," O'Donnell loudly told jurors. He said Billie got angry that she would often go running around with Kurt, Keith and their infant boy late into the night, often cruising up and down the main strip on the Miccosukee land.

"He's provoked and he does something he's said he'd do before (destroy the truck), something to make her stay home with these kids to clean up the trailer," O'Donnell said. "Wait until you see the trailer."

Prosecutors and the defense team will spend the next weeks arguing over whether the boys or the truck were the real target.

O'Donnell gave a long, rambling opening statement that prompted repeated objections from prosecutors and rebukes from Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Leon Firtel. In the process O'Donnell seemed to obscure what he called his strongest evidence: A jailhouse videotape showing Billie's reaction to news that his sons were in the truck.

Miccosukee police had arrested Billie and charged him with stealing the truck before they realized the children were dead. Lying on a cot in jail, Billie was nonchalant and refused to lead investigators to the Chevy, according to the videotape from a camera hidden at the Miccosukee jail. He said he had threatened his wife and "carried out the threat," by destroying the truck.

But when his father, Wayne Billie, told him the boys were in the truck, he broke down. Billie paced the floor, cried and put his head in his hands and kneeled in a praying motion, O'Donnell said.

"These pictures are not worth a thousand words, they're worth a million words in speaking for this man's innocence," O'Donnell said.

The problems began earlier in the night when Sheila Tiger left all three of her boys and the truck with a 15-year-old baby sitter, Melody Osceola, O'Donnell said. Upset that they weren't being cared for properly, Billie yanked Melody out of the truck while she held the youngest of the three boys.

He then took off, not knowing where the other two boys were, O'Donnell said. But the defense attorney seemingly glossed over what appears to be a weakness in the prosecution case: If Billie wanted to punish Tiger, as prosecutors said, then why didn't he take -- and kill -- all the boys?

Also Tuesday, prosecutors said one of the biggest issues at trial may be Billie's history of abusing women. He spent years beating his girlfriend and once badly beat her mother, Tamen said.

"The defendant is a man who said he's here to put women in their place, to make them serve him," Tamen said. "He was not going to tolerate her defying him. To teach her a lesson to never defy him he murdered their two little boys."

John Holland can be reached at jholland@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4531.